Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

1. Whether the Reid Technique and its variations currently being taught to
law enforcement personnel are effective;
- Consider the confession rate and accuracy of information obtained
through those techniques.
2. Whether law enforcement agents actually apply the interrogation training
they receive;
3. Whether particularly effective techniques and systems for elicitation of
truthful information and confessions exist in other countries;
- Compare U.S. interrogation data with data on interrogation
techniques and results in Britain, Japan, Israel, and Australia.
4. Whether the effectiveness and applicability of interrogation techniques
employed by U.S. law enforcement agencies, and the theories underlying
them, remain constant across cultures; and
5. Whether it would be feasible and effective to resort to a dedicated cadre
of specially trained interrogators as opposed, or in addition, to training
all criminal investigators on interrogation.
Such studies will be extremely difficult until U.S. law enforcement
organizations begin to videotape all of the interrogations they conduct. Clearly the
availability of videotapes would allow for feedback and constructive criticism by
superiors, thereby breaking bad habits before they take root. Similarly, videotaping
would encourage supervisors at various agencies and departments to begin more
regular observations of the interrogations conducted by their personnel so as to
offer feedback on their performance. 634
Section 14. Implications for Investigation and
Prevention of Terrorism
Interrogation will likely play a seminal role in the prevention and investigation
of terrorist threats and incidents. It would therefore be useful to evaluate whether
organizations dealing with terrorism can learn anything from current interrogation
practices used by law enforcement agencies. In this context, this section raises
questions and issues to be pondered and evaluated by more experienced and
qualified individuals.
At the outset we note that, despite claiming the contrary, the available
literature on interrogations and the related training provided by law enforcement
agencies are generally geared toward obtaining a confession. In contrast to
ordinary law enforcement investigations, which are predominantly reactive and
preeminently concerned with obtaining a conviction, a preventive terrorism
investigation has the sole objective of preventing an attack, and is thus a hybrid
of intelligence collection and interrogation. Although the literature occasionally
refers to incriminating statements, and law enforcement officers often refer to
the value of obtaining a detailed lie through an interrogation, it is unclear how
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Additional study on the effects of videotaping on the interrogations being taped would also be
useful.
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